Mother Nature Has Been Kind

Mother nature has been kind to us lately...............?  Well, at least in the firewood sense of the word.  With the last couple of fronts the wind has been strong enough to provide us with an ample amount of kindling - dead branches ALL OVER the yard - and two large tree branches which we have cut and stacked for next year's firewood.  The wood pile is stacked and firewood is in the garage getting dry for the winter's fires in our stoves.  We've had another front and thanks to the wind we now have a leaf-covered yard and probably more kindling sticks - just haven't been out to check yet.  It was a little chilly and wet.  The maples are about half empty now, but the Bradford pears only have a hint of their color so far.  We did have two really nice 70 degree days with no wind so we did get a lot of our fall chores done.  The front bushes have been trimmed and mulched along with what leaves had fallen into the driveway, but here it is two days later and we have three or four times as many leaves waiting to be mulched.  The next mulching will have to wait until the trees are done shedding as we have a once a fall raking rule!

Soups have been the choice of meals lately.  So far we have made lentil soup, cream of potato soup and have begun the process of making chicken noodle soup.  The chicken is off the bones and the broth is cooling so the fat can be skimmed off.  Then we just make the noodles and cut the celery, carrots and onions and COOK!!  Must be getting colder - soups sound soooo good!!!   So do afghans and quilts.  So far, I have finished one afghan for my daughter-in-law's mother and am working on another as well as getting the Mabry Mill quilt started.  We took apart all those grain bags and pressed them out.  We have about 20 of them which should be enough for a smallish quilt.  Will keep you up to date on the fun with that!

Dan and family are coming up this weekend and bringing black walnuts.  We'll probably head up the field and see if there are anymore.  Now if we could just find an easy, shell-free method of getting the walnuts out!!

Our Angry Tree has had Mr/Ms Squirrel sampling an eyeball lately.  Guess it wasn't too tasty!